Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Apparently the person who updated the page works (worked?) for a company called Internet Broadcasting Services that partners with NBC.

There is growing controversy over what happened next. When NBC and IBS discovered this someone else from IBS went to wikipedia and removed the references to his death. So here you have one or two professional news companies involved in knowingly modifying a public record to contain incorrect information.

Here is an article from alleyinsider.com that discusses it and also references a NY Times article on it.

Friday, June 20, 2008

This week I needed to bring my Ford Escape to the dealership to replace a bad alternator and fix the brakes. The bill was just under $1000. The service representative enrolled me in a brand new "rewards program" from Ford called Owner Advantage.

Friday, June 13, 2008

The emotional reaction we have to someone's death is almost always dependent on how well we knew and cared for the deceased. A "celebrity death" is a bit of an oddity because while many of us will have great sorrow, few will have ever actually met the person.

Part of it is explained because a medium like TV has a way of making us feel like we know those we watch. We may also truly care for the work of the person like the music of a musician, the writing of an author, or the leadership of a politician.

I never met Tim Russert but I've watched him every Sunday for years. I feel like I knew him and I liked him a lot. He did important and exceptional work covering politics for which I care a great deal.

His book Big Russ and Me was a best seller and has been on my todo reading list for a while now. I'll be just one of many who make the purchase this weekend.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

In it the author describes how he believes the main stream media distorts the news, consciously and unconsciously often due to a left leaning political bias or in acts of journalistic activism.

The book contained one chapter which I found extremely uncomfortable to read and consider. In Chapter 6, titled "Epidemic of Fear", he argues that the threat of AIDS to non-drug using heterosexuals in the U.S. has been far over stated. He says that this was done to "scare the hell out of straight America" so that "they would have to pay attention" to the problem "Otherwise, the activists feared there would never be a national outcry over AIDS".

It was difficult to read because it went against what I had been taught, "we are all at equal risk", and because those who challenge this are labeled as ignorant or bigoted.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.

Critics of the global Aids strategy complain that vast sums are being spent educating people about the disease who are not at risk, when a far bigger impact could be achieved by targeting high-risk groups and focusing on interventions known to work, such as circumcision, which cuts the risk of infection by 60 per cent, and reducing the number of sexual partners.

There were "elements of truth" in the criticism, Dr De Cock said. "You will not do much about Aids in London by spending the funds in schools. You need to go where transmission is occurring"